The Metropolitan Transportation Center (MTC) 912805

The Metropolitan Transportation Center (MTC) is an operational unit of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). The MTC is the focal point of Michigan's leadership role in the Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) technology. The MTC serves as a traffic operations service center and an IVHS test facility. The MTC facility now under construction and the functions to be performed within the MTC will be described. The infrastructure being developed to expand the existing traffic management in the Detroit Metropolitan area and the testbed program will be described. Specific emphasis will be placed on describing the first project of the testbed in which both the public and private sectors will be able to participate in the evaluation of various surveillance technologies and in-car communications. Initial efforts will address the “low end” users community by testing multiple incident detection and management techniques. The information learned will then be conveyed to the vehicles through several communications approaches, which also will be evaluated.